The home-darkroom companion for photographers who mix their own chemistry, time their own stages, and want it all written down, to the second.
iPhone · iPad · Mac · iOS 26 · v1.4 beta
New in 1.4 · July 2026
Version 1.4 rebuilds the develop flow around the process instead of the machine, and teaches Film Lab what every Bellini C-41 kit owner counts on their fingers: development units and the dial ladder.
The wizard now starts with what’s going in the tank: C-41 or black & white, and in which developer. From there the roll list only offers compatible film, and every roll arrives with a suggested dev time already attached.
Run the Bellini KITC41/5 on a Jobo ATL and you stop counting rolls. You count development units and turn a dial. Film Lab now speaks that language natively, with the same times the machine’s EPROM runs.
Greets you by time of day, shows your favourite film and camera, and puts one big button on the thing you’re most likely to do next.
Every photographer profile now carries a rank and a service record of their runs. The rank climbs as their developed-roll count does.
220 is retired (history stays intact), format chips no longer vanish on small phones, and ISO steppers walk the real third-stop ladder, so 320 is finally reachable.
Menu commands for new roll, develop, and recipes; visible focus rings; content that stops stretching on wide windows.
Tap MEASURE and the reading holds while you dial in the shot. Since 1.3 it’s a spot meter too: read the shadow that matters and place it on the zone where you want detail. The drums re-solve around your placement.
SPOT THE SHADOW · PLACE ON III · MIDDLE GREY FOLLOWS
Meter a face, a shadow, a highlight, then place it on the zone you want. Filter factors compensate for the red or orange on your lens.
Bodies and lenses with their real ranges. It never suggests a setting your camera can’t make. Calibration is per-device now, so the iPhone and iPad each hold their own offset.
Reciprocity curves for ~40 stocks turn “meter says 2 s” into “give it 5 s”, with an on-screen countdown to run the exposure.
Commit a frame straight from the meter. Every shot lands in a film-strip grid with settings, GPS, and the weather at the moment you fired.
Every mixed batch has two ways to go: used up or timed out. Film Lab tracks both and tells you which one runs out first, before it costs you a roll.
The dashboard radar reads each batch on both axes, rolls left and days left, and leads with whichever runs out first. Queue up more rolls than a batch has life for, and it says so.
Open a kit and the part-bottles appear with the right volumes. Mix a batch and the concentrate deducts automatically, per bath for multi-part developers. Unit kits count weighted development units instead of raw rolls.
Batch bars show exactly what’s left, in units or rolls, plus mixed and expiry dates. Fresh, tired, and dead states you can tell apart across the room.
Scan the box barcode and the roll fills itself in. Teach Film Lab a barcode once and it’s known on every device, forever.
Tap-friendly, dark by default, and loud enough to hear across the room. Here’s what lives inside.
DASHBOARD · next roll, chem radar, what’s drying
CHEMISTRY · kits, batches, baths & shelf life
RECIPES · steps, dilution, Q10 compensation
ROLLS · REF-numbered, process glyph, frame count
LAB · machines, gear, photographers, settings
Wall-clock countdown per stage, accurate across backgrounding, mirrored to the Lock Screen as a Live Activity. A darkroom-loud alarm rings until you acknowledge, then auto-advances.
Sequential REF numbers, film stock, push notation, camera, lens, photographer, location. Search across all of it. Print a sleeve label as a PDF.
510-Pyro, Bellini C-41 (incl. KITC41/5), Fuji Hunt, Cinestill, Ilford, Kodak kits with real dilutions, plus 50+ starter recipes from the manufacturers’ published sheets.
Account-less and synced through your own iCloud. Log a roll on the phone at the changing bag, review the run later on the Mac. Same data, no sign-in. The light meter stays on iPhone; it’s the one with a camera pointed at your scene.
The app launches empty. It’s your lab, not a demo. Walk it once, end to end, and tell me where it’s still rough.
Open the invite on your iPhone, install TestFlight from the App Store if you need it, then install Film Lab. First launch asks for Camera. That’s the light meter and barcode scanner only; no photos are taken or stored.
Add the machine you develop on: a Jobo CPE-2, an ATL-1000, or just Manual for a Paterson tank by hand. Manual is the most flexible default.
In Lab → Cameras & Lenses, save a body (slowest/fastest shutter) and a lens (widest/smallest aperture). The meter uses these; your rolls can be tagged with them.
Open a kit or add a concentrate in the Chemistry tab. The catalog knows 510-Pyro, Bellini (incl. KITC41/5), Fuji Hunt, Cinestill, Ilford, Kodak. Mix a batch; the concentrate deducts itself.
Add a roll in the Rolls tab; scanning the box barcode fills it in. Then hit Develop now on the Dashboard: pick the process, pick the roll, take the suggested recipe, run the timer.
The single most important step before you trust a reading on film you can’t chimp:
Open the meter → Calibrate → point at a grey card or your palm in direct sun → tap the 15 hint. Or read the same scene with your handheld meter and type its EV. Fine-trim ±0.1 by eye. Calibration is per-device, so do it on each iPhone or iPad you meter with. If you own a real meter, tell me how far off the phone was. That number is exactly the feedback I need.
Ranked by how useful it is to me:
Be blunt. “This is annoying” beats “nice app.” What I care about most right now: whether the process-first wizard beats your current routine, the meter’s accuracy against a real meter, and, if you run Bellini C-41 on an ATL, whether the dial recommendation matches what you would have set.